He is the author of several books, including Pakistan: Military Rule or People's Power (1970), Can Pakistan Survive? The Death of a State (1991), Pirates Of The Caribbean: Axis Of Hope (2006), Conversations with Edward Said (2005), Bush in Babylon (2003), and Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002), A Banker for All Seasons (2007), The Duel (2008), The Obama Syndrome (2010)[3] and The Extreme Centre: A Warning (2015).[4]

Ali's parents "both came from a very old, crusty, feudal family".[8] His father had broken with the family's conventions in politics when he was a student, adopting communism and atheism[citation needed]. Ali's mother also belonged to the same family and became a communist and an atheist upon meeting his father[citation needed]. However, Ali was taught the fundamentals of Islam to be able to argue against it.[8] He stated in Islam, Empire, and the Left: Conversation with Tariq Ali: "I grew up an atheist. I make no secret of it. It was acceptable. In fact, when I think back, none of my friends were believers. None of them were religious; maybe a few were believers. But very few were religious in temperament."[9]

Emerging activism

Ali first became politically active in his teens, taking part in opposition to the military dictatorship of Pakistan. An uncle who worked in the Pakistani military intelligence[7] warned his parents that Ali could not be protected.[5] His parents therefore decided to get him out of Pakistan and sent him to England to study at Exeter College, Oxford, where he studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.[5][10] He was elected President of the Oxford Union in 1965. In 1967 Ali was one of 64 prominent figures, including the Beatles, who signed a petition calling for the legalisation of marijuana.[11] Ali's tenure at the Union included a meeting with Malcolm X in December 1964 during which Malcolm X expressed deep consternation about his own risk of assassination.[12]

Career

Tariq Ali presenting the Spanish version of Conversations with Edward Said in Córdoba, Spain, in 2010.

In 1967 Ali was in Camiri, Bolivia, not far from where Che Guevara was captured, to observe the trial of Régis Debray. He was accused of being a Cuban revolutionary by authorities. Ali then said: "If you torture me the whole night and I can speak Spanish in the morning I'll be grateful to you for the rest of my life."[15]

During this period he was an IMG candidate in Sheffield Attercliffe at the February 1974 UK general election and was co-author of Trotsky for Beginners, a cartoon book. In 1981, the IMG dissolved when its members entered the Labour Party: the IMG was promptly proscribed. Ali then abandoned activism in the revolutionary left and supported Tony Benn in his bid to become deputy leader of the Labour Party that year.

In 1990, he published the satire Redemption, on the inability of the Trotskyists to handle the downfall of the Eastern bloc. The book contains parodies of many well-known figures in the Trotskyist movement. In 1999 Ali strongly criticised US and UK interventions in the Balkans in the piece Springtime for NATO.[16]

Screenplay

Tariq Ali's The Leopard and The Fox, first written as a BBC screenplay in 1985, is about the last days of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Never previously produced because of a censorship controversy, it was finally premiered in New York in October 2007, the day before former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto returned to her home country after eight years in exile.[22]

Personal life

He currently lives in Highgate, London with his partner Susan Watkins, editor of the New Left Review. He has three children: Natasha from a previous relationship and Chengiz and Aisha with Watkins.[24]

Works (partial list)

The New Revolutionaries: A Handbook of the International Radical Left (editor), New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1969. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 79-79860